The Guadalajara Reporter

Figuring out who Miguel Hidalgo was is like combing through a tightly woven web of contradictions and soaring myth

Both modern Mexico and current “popular” foreign sources have a hard time figuring out who the instigator of Mexico’s great War of Independence, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, was.  This is not a new problem, but one worsened by a lack of present-day historically well-tuned analysis.  The “dusty” pueblo of Dolores (in the intendency of Guanajuato), where the 50-year-old priest was assigned in 1803, has been said by one Hidalgo aficionado to be a “coveted parish.”  It brought in a handsome sum – eight-to-nine thousand pesos a year, he contended.  Yet the majority of its parishioners were described by contemporary Mexican sources as “illiterate, poor indios,” a description that included the mestizo population also.  Hidalgo’s constant efforts to create, and train his parishioners to manage numerous small enterprises were aimed, by all evidence, at improving thin family economies.  These included a pottery business, the forbidden production of grapes to produce forbidden wine, planting and nourishing forbidden olive trees to produce forbidden olive oil, beekeeping, a tannery and a silk-making industry, among others.

Contradictions of course are one of the things that have long nourished curiosity in Mexico’s complex and captivating history and culture.  But those manifested by Hidalgo have stirred fierce controversy because of his fame as the “Father of Mexico.”  To deflect serious research, some scholars, historians, journalists and politicians, seemingly have joined in blurring Hidalgo’s notable inner flaws.

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